Posts Tagged ‘mindmaps’

In the last post, I took a step (or several) back from the specifics of system design to think about what I’m actually aiming to get from the system. I ended up with the following two qualities I want it to have:

Engaging: I want it to produce a game that’s interesting, stimulating and challenging for both the players and the GM.

Satisfying: I also want it to feel “complete”, i.e. not to feel like something is lacking or unfinished or half-baked.

I then went away and tried to explain exactly what I meant by those qualities in practical terms. I even drew MindMaps. And I hate MindMaps.

Below is the outcome. I’ll tidy this up into some stricter requirements later, but for now it’s just in bullet point brainstorm format so you can see my thought process.

Engaging

Interesting / Stimulating

Nobody getting bored

All players involved in the action, even if their character isn’t

No character overshadowed by another

Play is inherently watchable

“Dramatic”

Has moments of tension

Even failures can be rewarding / interesting

Has a mechanism for encouraging dramatic / exciting character actions

Encourages varied play

Supports different settings

Supports a good variety of character actions

Challenging

Requires and rewards imagination / good ideas

Doesn’t limit character actions to a restricted set (e.g. a skill list)

Low / Medium power level

Has clear consequences of PC action

Strategic

Immersive

Not hampered by out-of-character stuff

Quick resolution mechanism

Mechanics that are easy to remember

Simple

Consistent

Intuitive

In-character knowledge = out-of-character knowledge

Restricted conferring / tactical planning time

Focussed on the player characters

No mass combat

Heroic not Epic characters (as per this post on Transneptune Games’ blog)

Satisfying

Reasonably realistic simulation

At least from the players’ point of view; behind the screen it can be less so.

Believable character descriptors and advancement

Mechanics for chance need to be realistic for the game world

This will lead to intuitive mechanics

Fictional world supplies the mechanics, not vice versa

Including character development – not powered by beating challenges (or at least not only by that method)

It’s clear that some of these points naturally reinforce each other, while some may be at odds. Still, my system doesn’t have to capture every single point on that list – the main thing is that I understand what those points are, so I can make explicit decisions about what to include and what to leave out.

To me, the most interesting points are Immersive and Strategic, which are quite ill-defined in my mind. In the next post I’ll consider those two a little more closely. After that, I’ll come back to the points above and re-examine them in light of the articles I’ve been reading on RPG theory.